


New Beginnings

by Answrs



Series: Ghost!Vivi AU [2]
Category: Mystery Skulls Animated
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Illustrated, M/M, Multi, err... kinda, explaining ghost evolution, ghost vivi, in which the author spends far too long, it's at the end at least?, minor description of gore, rampant worldbuilding, works as standalone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 08:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14374518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Answrs/pseuds/Answrs
Summary: My head is stripped just like a screw that's been tightened too many times(When I think of you)(When I think of you)She doesn't know how she knows what she does.(But things are changing.)





	New Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Original Post:  
> http://answrs.tumblr.com/post/172975024923/ghostvivi-the-beginning-pt2  
> Illustration linked at the end for minor spoilers

The torpedo of energy shoots through the rooms, the ball gathering speed like a cart on a coaster as it swoops down and around in dramatic arches and dives, a long spectral tail flowing behind, the bright blue trail of a shooting star.

* * *

It had been what felt like forever ( _months_ , her mind had supplied, but the ones-like-her hadn’t understood what that meant so she’d dismissed it), and in a way it  _was_  her own forever, following this mottled family ( _Hers_ ) ever since she’d first formed, just a measly spark of a wisp in those horrid white halls of pain and death and grief.

The one who was like-her-but-more had let her stay and grow even when his colors towards her were those of annoyance, anger, mourning, and she’d flourished under his wary care. (The others-like-her called him Boss, but the honorific had never seemed to quite fit the large spirit to her. He was just…  _Lewis_.)

She’d been worried as her colors had first begun to change, from the pink of her cousins to a light blue that was her own (it had just felt…  _right_ , somehow). But instead of anger there had been a flash of  _hope_ in those black eyes. It had been quickly clamped down, but that was when they had started to call her!  _Vivi_ , they’d said, an actual, proper name, and she  _loved_ it! Where before there had been only grief and silence, there was still that sad yearning, but the three would talk, even play with her!

It had been what brought her to now, Lewis (she couldn’t think of him as anything else) instructing her to fetch Arthur from his room to the kitchen. It had become a common occurrence, distracting the lone human from his work to eat, even just take a break from the constant tinkering of his. He never seemed able to say no to her, and she was smug with the others for this apparent innate talent of hers. She could squirm into his arms and get  _all_ the pats, even draw out a hoarse laugh from the almost mute blond when she snuggled into his silly little face-tuft. (The thought bothered her, how quiet the human was. He should be joking, grinning, energetic… but he had  _always_ been lethargic and withdrawn, for as long as she had known him.  _So why-?_ )

None of this passes through her mind as she rounds the final bend, rocketing through the closed door and slamming the breaks in an explosion of sparks in front of the already standing mechanic.

**_“Artie Lewis made lunch come on get up come eat come on!”_ **

* * *

The hospital hadn’t been able to “fix” the damage, of course, but they’d done their best to clean her up, swathe her in bandages and wires and make her comfortable. “A fighter”, they’d said. ( _“A lost cause”, they hadn’t voiced._ ) They’d known too, but denial was a powerful thing, begging her to stay with them,  _for_ them. To hold on, to pull through, even when they knew logically the damage done.

 _Knowing_  was entirely different from  _seeing_ it, however, and Arthur’s scream echoes through the mansion.

To see the woman in all her dead glory, see it fresh and bloody and moving, after not seeing  _His_  Vivi for nearly a year is almost enough to break him right then and there. Still not realizing what’s happened, she cocks her head to the side, oozing spectral blood to the floor from her mangled body, head and side half caved in, arm dangling limp from where it’s broken in four places… as the glass Arthur is holding falls and shatters on the floor her concentration is lost, and the body melts back into a more deadbeat-like form. More defined than before, but hardly close to human. Mystery and Lewis slam through the doorway just moments after to the sight of a petrified blond and tadpole-like blue spectre hovering above him.

The blue spirit is confused Artie looked at her like that, why he flinches away so violently when she tries to coo and nuzzle, soothe him. Her thoughts are even more of a confused jumble now, she isn’t actually sure what just happened, she'd… changed? And then things? But now she’s back? To normal? Kinda? But  _normal_  doesn’t feel  _right_ anymore, feels  _wrong_ somehow, feels  _less_ than she  _should_ be. She doesn’t understand what’s happening or why or how, brain a half-dumped jigsaw puzzle. So she’s hovering and darting around the scrunched up hyperventilating stringbean, trying to comfort and figure out but he’s flinching away and he never did before? ( _Except_   _yes he did, often_ , she knows, just… doesn’t know when or why or even  _how_ she knows that and the thought is washed away by a dozen others)

* * *

Lewis shoots in with Mystery hot on his heels, they’d felt a flash of  _Vivi_ and heard Arthur’s scream, but now everything’s gone quiet and  _what the fuck?!!_

He gets there and immediately knows what’s happened, but he doesn’t know what to do, who to go to. On one hand, comforting and calming his best friend,  _boyfriend_ , who’s a trembling mess already well past falling apart. On the other hand, he knows,  _remembers_ the utter confusion and eventual freakout that Vivi’s newest iteration of forms entails, had even retreated to the form a few times himself. He remembers those first minutes he’d finally become truly  _aware_ of what was happening, confused and angry and  _scared_ , so should he leave Arthur to Mystery and help her, or the other way around? The fox had known her forever, but what if she didn’t remember him yet? And Mystery wouldn’t have the firsthand experience like he did, but-

Mystery makes the choice for him, leaping forward to wrap a single elongating tail over wide unseeing eyes. There’s a thrum of red energy and the man goes limp, sent into a resting state by the kitsune’s magic. Mystery looks over his shoulder and gives the ghost a  _Look_ , jerking his head towards the blue spirit as he lays the unconscious man on the floor and curls up around him.

Her anchor is forming still, wisps of memory, self, converging into a shape at her ‘chest’, swirling and pulsing and if they aren’t careful it’s gonna konk poor Arthur right on the head when it finishes forming and she’s swept up into it with how badly she’s fluttering all around him.

Oh so delicately tan hands curl lightly around the disoriented spirit, pulling her and her whirlwind of memories back. He draws her into a hug before turning her back around in view of the fretting vulpine and blond lump curled into his side. The blue ghost is becoming more and more overwhelmed and it’s too much and all these memories and she’s  _dead_ and  _nothing makes sense_  and that  _terrifies_  her  _and-_

“Shh, it’s okay, you’re safe, you’re safe. We’re all here, Mystery, Arthur, and me, we won’t leave you shh you’re okay it’ll be over soon I promise. Just hold on a little longer Vi, you can rest and then things will all make sense, it’s alright, it’s okay, you’re safe here…”

His holds on her tightens as wiggling turns to struggling turns to seizing, whirling clumps of a soon-to-be anchor soon a tornado around her. He winces as they pound against him but hugs the growing ghost tight, refusing to let go. Finally, after what feels an eternity the pieces change course and crash in ball of light. She lets out a screech of alarm as she’s sucked into it, the mass pulsing and swirling until an almost anticlimactic end, the morphing shape letting out one last flash of light before settling, quietly falling into waiting hands. Lewis lets a wry smile grace his tired face as a mirror image of his own heart touches skeletal-again fingers. And they called _him_ sentimental.

With a tired grunt Lewis finally bobs back across the room to the pair of living beings. Kneeling down, he places Vivi’s anchor in the crook of Arthur’s arm, who immediately upon feeling the familiar shape reflexively shifts and curls around it, nestling it right above his own heart. Lewis watches as Mystery noses and licks the new metal, checking to make sure his child is really back, is safe and  _here_ with them.

A wash of exhaustion comes over the pink spectre. It turns out getting whacked repeatedly by chunks of ghostly metal hurts, apparently. So he places his own heart atop Arthur’s hand, curious how the man might react to a second anchor. The blond murmurs in his sleep, before the flesh hand paws at the metal before drawing it close next to Vivi like a mother hen to a misplaced chick.

When they wake there will be much to do, to ask and say and teach. _But for now,_ Lewis thinks as he dissipates, _now they can rest. All four of them together again._

**Author's Note:**

> Illustration!:  
> http://answrs.tumblr.com/post/173276273220/httpsarchiveofourownorgseries1001481-and


End file.
